


Deal

by honooko



Category: VIXX
Genre: Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Sanghyuk made a deal with Satan, everyone loves Jaehwan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 01:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20219824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honooko/pseuds/honooko
Summary: Sanghyuk is highkey nursing a revenge fantasy, and Satan himself arrives to make him an offer he can't refuse. There are unforeseen consequences. Luckily, Jaehwan is there to help. Kind of.





	Deal

**Author's Note:**

> I literally started this fic like a year ago, but I've never been terribly confident in my characterization of Jaehwan, so it stalled. I'm relatively okay with the result here?

Yes, he was still mad about the truck stop thing.

He pretended it was fine now; he’d smile and laugh and not mention to any of them how terrified he’d been for the brief time he’d been alone. What were they expecting? He was a teenager, alone, at night, with no way to contact anyone, no money, and _no idea where he even was._ Five minutes or five hours would have had the same impact, and left him with the same, years-held internal resolution:

He would be scarier than a truck stop, and they would all fear him as he feared them, driving away, leaving.

_So help him, God._

“Yo,” said a very deep, yet weirdly familiar voice. Sanghyuk jerked awake, staring at the glowing figure in the center of the room. He (it?) was glowing, and for some reason no matter how hard or long he looked, the figure’s face never seemed to settled on any particular features; they shifted just enough, constantly, to always be not-quite-a-face.

Wonshik was still snoring like a thunderstorm.

“I’ve been thinking,” the figure said. “You and me, we could set something up.”

“What?” Sanghyuk squeaked. The figure pointed at him, then back at himself.

“You,” he repeated, “and me. A partnership. A deal.”

“Fuck,” Sanghyuk realized abruptly. “You’re Satan.”

“Oh hey, you’ve heard of me!” Satan said, visibly pleased. “That’s great! Good to know the brand is still going around; it’s so hard to keep up with you millennials, geez.”

“Why are you in my room?!” Sanghyuk asked.

“Here’s the thing,” Satan said, clasping his hands together. “I kind of heard—from a friend of a friend, of sorts—that you’ve got a bit of a revenge fantasy going. I just wanted you to know that I’m totally here for you and I support you.”

“Revenge fantasy?”

“I know a lot of guys at truck stops,” Satan said, sounding almost apologetic. “That was a dick move, I’m totally with you on that.”

“You want to help me... get revenge?” Sanghyuk said carefully, intrigued despite the very obvious knowledge that he was literally _speaking to the devil._

“Buddy, listen,” Satan said, “They did you wrong. All five of them. Should have been watching out for you, right? But nah, they just trolled you!”

“I mean,” Sanghyuk said, “Basically.”

“Of course you’d want payback for that,” Satan said. “It was _child endangerment_. That’s heavy shit!”

“They were only gone for a bit,” Sanghyuk attempted. 

“Did you know that?”

“Well, no.”

Satan sighed, shaking his head.

“Dicks,” he said, weary. “Just a bunch of dicks.”

“So how exactly were you thinking of... helping me?” Sanghyuk asked.

“Glad you asked!” Satan said, brightening around his edges from a low-level coal burning to a more effervescent flickering. “Here’s what I’m thinking: the mother of all glow-ups!”

“What’s a glow-up?” Sanghyuk asked, confused but intrigued. Wonshik’s snore rattled the window as he remained completely unaware of anything else in the room.

“Growing up, but like,” Satan said, “Growing up _hot_.”

“I think I’m going to do that anyway,” Sanghyuk said. “No offense.”

“None taken, you’re totally right, but see—okay, look, you’re a little shrimpy, yeah? You’ll get a bit sturdier sure, but look at these guys around you: twigs. Little twig legs, twig arms. You’ve got the one over there,” he gestured towards the door, “that’s basically a torso with noodles for limbs. Rumpelstiltskin over here can get a six-pack if he works for it, but I’m not talking about that.”

Sanghyuk filed away the ‘Taekwoon-hyung has noodles for limbs’ for later use.

“But with _my_ help, you won’t just line up with them—you’ll overpower them. Literally. We’ll make you _huge_. Tall, wide, beefy. Like a slender linebacker. You could chuck any one of them, if you wanted to!” Satan said with great enthusiasm. He paused for a moment. 

“Well, okay,” he amended. “You could chuck almost all of them. Your leader has his own thing going I’m under a non-disclosure agreement about, but suffice to say I don’t recommend vengeance against him in particular. The other four are totally fair game.”

“That sounds _awesome_,” Sanghyuk gushed, excited. “What do I have to give you? My soul? Do I need it?”

“Nah, not _your_ soul,” Satan said with a hand wave. “I don’t go one-by-one anymore, we’re in the 21st century now. You’ll get souls _for_ me, by the dozens!”

“Uh,” Sanghyuk said. “I like the pitch but I’m not interested in being a serial killer.”

“Oh no, not like _that_, nasty,” Satan said. “You don’t have to kill somebody to take their soul, you just like... drop a little pin on it, so I can find it later. Geotagging. Hashtag ‘Satan’s dibs’.”

“So how exactly do I do that?” Sanghyuk asked skeptically. Satan wiggled his fingers in Sanghyuk’s direction.

“Seduction, dude. You’re gonna be _hot_. I get more souls from fangirl thirst than you would _believe._ Fanboy thirst too, of course. Fangirl thirst it just a bit more easily accessible, you see.”

“So what, I just... flex at them and doom them to Hell?”

“Basically,” Satan said. “Honestly half of them are already going to Hell anyway. You’re just giving them a FastPass to the front of the line.”

Sanghyuk considered the offer; Wonshik’s snore made his bones feel fragile. He looked at his roommate, then back at the Devil.

“If I say yes,” he said, “what’s the timeline on this... glow-up?”

“Three or four years?” Satan said. “I’m gonna give you a boost, but we’ve got to make it look plausible. Ridiculous, but plausible. Also if I just snap my fingers now and make you huge, you’d probably die, so that isn’t really ideal for either of us.”

“So I’d still grow,” Sanghyuk said, trying to clarify, “but _bigger._”

“Huge,” Satan said. “I’m thinking broad shoulders, solid waist, thighs like a _horse._ You’d still have to work out for it, but with about half the effort it should reasonably take. And the results will be more.”

“And my soul is mine? Not yours?”

“Your soul might be mine, depending on what you do or do not do, but it will be unrelated to this deal,” Satan said. “I’m not dibs’ing you, I’m hoping you’ll dibs for _me_. If you can figure out how to do that with social media by the way, that’d be sweet.”

“But half of them are doomed already, right?” he repeated, slightly guilty about the probability that he would be earmarking the souls of fans.

“More than half,” Satan said. “Honestly, once you become legal, the number will probably drop a bit just because they’ll stop being freaking pedos lusting after Hot You. You’re gonna be hot like... next year. It’s going to make people uncomfortable. I’m pretty excited.”

“Alright, I’m sold,” Sanghyuk said. “What do I have to do, sign in blood or something?”

“Ew, gross,” Satan said. “No, dude, we’re just gonna shake on it. Fuck, where do you humans come up with this shit, seriously? Blood? That’s just nasty, use a pen like a normal person.”

“Is it weird that I kind of want to hang out with you?” Sanghyuk asked. 

“I get that a lot,” Satan said. “Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’m a pretty popular guy on this plane of existence.”

“Alright, Satan,” Sanghyuk said, extending his hand. “Have we got a deal?”

“One glow-up in exchange for thumb-tacking thirsty fangirl souls,” Satan said, taking his hand. “Deal.”

The moment the deal was struck, a rush of impossibly-hot flame seemed to roll through him; he almost screamed, but as soon as he felt it, it was gone, leaving absolutely nothing in its wake. No burn, no mark, no hissing—just silence where moments before, Lucifer had been standing in his bedroom.

“Four years,” Sanghyuk said to himself with a smile. “Four years, and you guys are _mine._”

The first to notice was Hakyeon.

“Wait,” he said as Sanghyuk walked up to him roughly nine months after the deal. “No, no it—you can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?” Sanghyuk asked.

“Taller than me,” Hakyeon said, his expression turning into one of horror. “No, do not do that! Do not make me the short one! Han Sanghyuk _don’t you dare get taller than me._”

“Uh,” Sanghyuk said, holding a hand at the top of Hakyeon’s head and bringing it flat across—to his temples. “Too late.”

“This is my fault,” Hakyeon said, voice hollow and shocked. “I let you eat meat all the time. I should have known. I thought since you couldn’t drink milk, it wouldn’t happen but—”

Sanghyuk felt a stab of guilt; he already knew he’d be taller, but he suspected the degree to which he was going to outgrow Hakyeon would be even more disturbing. He also had not forgotten Satan’s cryptic warning about taking Hakyeon on.

“Hyung, don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m still your baby, just... a big baby, right?”

Hakyeon put his hands on Sanghyuk’s cheeks and squished them.

“You will always be my baby,” Hakyeon said seriously. “My. Baby. Boy.”

“Sure Mom,” Sanghyuk said, feeling somewhat endangered. “Of course I will.” Hakyeon squished his face just a tiny bit more before releasing him.

“Still,” he said, crossing his arms, “Don’t you dare get higher than Binnie.”

“Please stop borrowing my jeans,” Hongbin asked him with some distress. “If anyone figures it out, they’ll notice how short my legs are.”

“They’re really short,” Sanghyuk observed, looking at his exposed ankles.

“NO,” Hakyeon shouted from behind them before running into his room and slamming the door. 

“Uh—”

“Don’t ask,” Sanghyuk advised Hongbin with a sigh. “Really, just. Just don’t.”

It was hard to say if Jaehwan had really noticed anything. He must have noticed the fact that Sanghyuk was taller, and he’d definitely noticed how broad Sanghyuk was getting because he’d started putting his hands on Sanghyuk’s shoulders at every opportunity. He’d also lean against his back and go in for a hug.

“Hyung,” Sanghyuk said with a patient sigh as Jaehwan pressed himself against Sanghyuk’s spine. He could feel Jaehwan’s face at the nape of his neck. “Do you mind?”

“Nope!” Jaehwan said with a chirp. His arms were also quite suddenly around Sanghyuk’s waist, which was not something he was tolerating _anymore_.

Except from Hakyeon. He didn’t have a death wish.

“Are you hugging me?” He asked with excruciating patience.

“No, I fell onto your back and around your waist.”

Sanghyuk pried his arms off and tried to extricate himself from the situation, but Jaehwan seemed determined to make himself a nuisance, because when Sanghyuk held his arms up, over his head, Jaehwan attempted to do some sort of clumsy ballet twirl and fall back on his chest. Sanghyuk side-stepped it, barely, and only held on to Jaehwan’s arms to keep him from landing on his ass.

“I didn’t say you could hug me,” Sanghyuk pointed out. Jaehwan pouted at him. 

“So are you saying I can’t?” He whined.

“I didn’t say that either,” Sanghyuk’s mouth said, completely disconnected from his rational brain. Jaehwan beamed at him.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, tapping Sanghyuk fondly on the cheek before walking away.

“Revenge,” Sanghyuk muttered to himself. “_I’m getting revenge._”

Taekwoon had really been asking for it. Over time, as Sanghyuk grew physically, Taekwoon seemed to be growing emotionally; he laughed, he smiled, he teased—everything that he’d held back before seemed to finally be things he was comfortable showing. This both made him much, much less scary and much, much more _annoying_.

Taekwoon kept pinching him. It was clearly playful, but also not nearly as soft as play should rightfully have been, and where at first Sanghyuk was just shoving him slightly with his shoulders, Taekwoon _wouldn’t stop._ He was worse than a little kid sometimes. When he’d finally had enough, he grabbed Taekwoon’s wrists and pushed his palms back towards him, which immediately caused Taekwoon to bend over and make a whiny sound of pain.

Sure, it hurt, but it wasn’t the worst thing ever. Taekwoon just over-reacted to literally everything in the hope of getting some attention. It was weird how much he wanted attention sometimes, considering he spent exactly half of his time stubbornly trying to avoid it.

“Ow,” Taekwoon said. When Sanghyuk pushed harder, he yelped. “OW, OW OW OW!”

Hakyeon appeared suddenly; he didn’t immediately smack Sanghyuk, but he didn’t seem far from it.

“What are you doing,” he said flatly.

“He was pinching me,” Sanghyuk explained. “A lot.”

Hakyeon crossed his arms and sighed.

“Alright,” Hakyeon said. “He deserves it then. Please don’t break his wrists, we’ll have to tape a mic to his hand and he’ll whine when we rip the tape off later.”

“Got it,” Sanghyuk agreed.

“Hayeonnie, _help me_,” Taekwoon cried.

“I told you, stop harassing the kids,” Hakyeon said, apparently reminding him. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson after this.” He left without making any attempt to rescue Taekwoon, which Sanghyuk took to be approval of his methods.

“Sanghyuk,” Taekwoon squeaked. “I’m going to break.”

“Are you going to stop pinching me?” Sanghyuk asked patiently.

“Yes!”

“_From now on?_” he pressed.

“Ah,” Taekwoon said. “I’ll try?”

“Hyung,” Sanghyuk said, disappointment in his tone. “You know that’s not good enough.”

“I’m sorry!” Taekwoon whimpered. “I won’t pinch you!”

“Ever?”

“Ever!” Taekwoon agreed. Sanghyuk released him; the second he was free, Taekwoon demonstrated a complete lack of pattern recognition and attempt to kick him in the shin. Sanghyuk just reached out, grabbed him around the waist, flailed him around while he screamed, and threw him (relatively) gently to the floor.

He crouched down to pat Taekwoon’s shoulder slightly harder than necessary. In a very cheerful voice, he said, “Now, what have we learned?”

“I’m your hyung!” Taekwoon bristled, sitting up.

“Okay,” Sanghyuk said, utterly unaffected.

“You can’t throw me!”

“I just did, though,” Sanghyuk said mildly. “Hyung.”

Before Taekwoon had the chance to whine more, Hongbin walked in. He took one look at the situation before him, Sanghyuk crouched over a whimpering Taekwoon, and seemed to deduce what was going on.

“Hyung,” Hongbin said, shaking his head, “Whatever it is, you’re going to die if you keep doing it.”

Taekwoon didn’t pinch him again for another week.

When he walked past Jaehwan’s door on his way to bed, it took him almost thirty seconds to register why Jaehwan looked wrong; he wasn’t even doing anything, just sitting at his computer with his knees pulled up to his chest. When he then pulled the hem of the oversized sweater he was wearing over them, Sanghyuk realized the sweater wasn’t actually oversized at all.

It was _his_.

“Hey,” Sanghyuk said, standing in Jaehwan’s doorway with his arms crossed. “What are you doing?”

“Shhh,” Jaehwan hushed him. “I’m reading creepypastas.”

“Why—”

“Shhh!” Jaehwan repeated as if Sanghyuk was somehow being louder than text. He came up behind Jaehwan and reached around to poke him in the knee.

“You’re stretching my sweater out,” he complained.

“I’m making it better,” Jaehwan countered. “Look, it’s almost a blanket now.”

“You know what would make a better blanket than _my sweater?_” Sanghyuk said, leaning down. “An _actual blanket._”

“Yeah, okay, but blankets don’t smell like you,” Jaehwan pointed out. He leaned back so Sanghyuk was hanging over him. “Unless you want to give me one of your blankets.”

“Why do you want something that smells like me?” Sanghyuk asked, baffled.

“You smell nice,” Jaehwan said with a smile, as if that explained it completely.

“Again, I’m not sure why you want that?” Sanghyuk said.

“Have you read some of these?” Jaehwan said, gesturing at the screen with a sweater-paw. “They’re terrifying. This one actually haunts your USB drive and makes all your electronic batteries explode.”

“I hope you don’t plan to sleep for the next week,” Sanghyuk said.

“Hence: the sweater!” Jaehwan crowed, triumphant. “You’re bigger and stronger than me, and can definitely fight off USB ghosts, so if I smell like you, _they’ll stay away from me too!_”

Sanghyuk blinked.

He hadn’t meant to literally smother Wonshik, but after a certain decibel level, noise-cancelling headphones could only do so much; he could usually lessen the sound by rolling Wonshik onto his side, somewhat curbing what had to be some sort of severe sleep disorder. But after two rolls and one full-blown ‘wake the fuck up before my ears bleed’ shaking, Wonshik was both asleep again, and about to cause permanent hearing loss.

In utter, exhausted frustration, Sanghyuk grabbed a pillow and put it over Wonshik’s face in an earnest attempt to just muffle it _a little._ But as he held it, suddenly Wonshik started flailing more than usual and Sanghyuk realized, abruptly, he was about to commit manslaughter.

Not _quite_ the revenge he was after.

He whipped the pillow off and stared at Wonshik with guilty eyes.

“Did you just try to _kill me?!_” Wonshik asked.

“No!” Sanghyuk said immediately. “It was an accident!”

Wonshik was staring at him, and his expression turned ever so slightly towards ‘fearful’.

“Are... you sure?” He asked cautiously. “It definitely felt like you were trying to kill me.”

“I’m sorry,” Sanghyuk said. “I just wanted you to... stop... breathing...”

“Sanghyuk,” Wonshik said, sitting up and putting a hand on his shoulder. “That’s called ‘murder.’”

“I’ve put stuff on your face before,” Sanghyuk pointed out in what he felt was a perfectly reasonable manner. “You’re still alive.” Like blankets, t-shirts, smaller pillows, and once a cushion he’d stolen off the sofa.

“You never _pressed a pillow against my airways_,” Wonshik shot back. “Also your hands are huge now.”

Sanghyuk looked at his palm; he hadn’t really thought about it, but they were kind of... big.

“I’m just gonna... sleep on the couch,” Wonshik said, grabbing his blanket and a pillow. “So you can—get some rest. And not try to kill me. Again.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you!” Sanghyuk repeated as Wonshik left the room. His protest seemed to fall on deaf ears, and he felt genuinely bad about it, but as he looked at the pillow and then back to his own hands, he had to face the facts: he could have killed Wonshik. On accident.

‘Strong’ didn’t feel like quite enough of a descriptor.

“Satan,” Sanghyuk said to his empty bedroom. “If you’ve got a sec, could you—”

A circle on his floor abruptly burst into flame then blackened; the figure that rose out of it still did not quite have a face, but he did throw his arms in the air like an excited sorority girl meeting friends at a party.

“Sanghyuk, hey!” he said. “It’s been years buddy, how’re you doing? You look pretty big!”

“I am,” Sanghyuk said. “And I kind of want to stop.”

“Being big?” Satan said. “Little late to go back, sorry.”

“No, I mean—I’m good like this. I don’t need to be any taller, or heavier, or—whatever. This is fine,” Sanghyuk said, looking down at his palms.

“Whoa, hey now,” the devil said gently. “What’s going on? You okay?”

“I almost killed my roommate,” Sanghyuk said.

“Wasn’t that… the idea?”

“No!” Sanghyuk said. “I don’t want to _kill_ them, I just want to _scare_ them. But I seriously almost smothered Wonshik and that’s not what I wanted at all!”

“Bro, look, I speak for myself and St. Peter here: neither of us is going to hold _that_ against you, I can literally hear him from my office downstairs,” the devil informed him. “JC himself would stuff a sock in that mouth.”

“JC?” Sanghyuk asked. “You mean Jesus Christ?”

“That’s the guy,” Satan nodded. “Can’t say the name myself, it kind of... hurts my mouth...”

“_Anyway_,” Sanghyuk said, trying to steer the conversation back on track. “My point is, I want to stop here. I’ll keep marking fans like you want, that’s fine, just—can I stop now? Growing?”

Satan made a hissing noise; it was a weird combination of uncomfortable housewife and spitting cobra.

“About that,” the devil said, wringing his hands. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

“What do you mean it’s too late?!”

“I mean I kind of already put in the work order; construction has begun. It’s tied to your entire body, dude. If we ‘stopped’ you, you’d probably drop dead. Nobody wants that.”

“But I’m already tall and heavy!” Sanghuk cried. He held out his hands. “Look at these palms! This is ridiculous!”

“You said ‘big’,” Satan reminded him. “Go big or go home, right?”

“So there’s nothing you can do?” Sanghyuk asked, desperate.

“Kid, I’m sorry,” the devil said, sounding remarkably sympathetic, “but that’s the thing with deals with me: you’ll probably regret it later. If it helps, you’ll top off about 185cm or so; weight kind of depends on how much you’re lifting at that point, but it’s not like you’ll be the Incredible Hulk. Just big.”

“I don’t want to accidentally _hurt_ anyone,” Sanghyuk insisted, very upset by the news that there was nothing to be done.

“You’ll probably be taking that all up with Pete in the end,” Satan said, shrugging. “He makes the final call. Usually.” Without so much as a ‘see you’ Satan immediately vanished, leaving nothing but a wisp of smoke in the air.

Sanghyuk looked at his palms again.

“Fuck.”

“Aren’t you coming?” Hongbin asked him a few days later. He and Wonshik had their gym bags slung over their shoulders, waiting expectantly. Sanghyuk shook his head, silent.

“Are you sure?” Wonshik asked, sounding concerned. “You haven’t gone in a few days. Are you sick?”

“I’m fine,” Sanghyuk said flatly. “Go.”

Wonshik didn’t look any less concerned, but he shrugged and left. Sanghyuk pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up more and tried to hide himself in it; maybe if he just stopped moving, he could halt the growing process. If that failed, he was prepared to go vegan. He wasn’t 100% sure what being vegan entailed, but he heard it generally kept weight off, and that was a sacrifice he could make.

“Hyukkie?” Jaehwan said, looking around the doorframe. “Are you skipping again?”

Sanghyuk didn’t answer; he just slouched more. Jaehwan invited himself further inside and sat on the end of Sanghyuk’s bed; he reached out to turn Sanghyuk’s desk chair around to face him. Stuffing his (too damn big) hands into the hoodie pocket, Sanghyuk avoided eye contact.

“Hey,” Jaehwan said softly. “What’s going on?” He put a hand on Sanghyuk’s knee; he had well-sized hands, a good palm-to-finger ratio, and the fingers themselves tapered beautifully. He usually had several rings on, but today, only their friendship ring remained.

Sanghyuk’s hands would never match again.

“I could break that, if I wanted,” Sanghyuk informed Jaehwan, nodding at the hand on his knee.

“Uh,” Jaehwan said, confused. “Do you want to?”

“No.”

“So why does that matter?”

“Because it does.”

Jaehwan sighed in a very over-dramatic way, stood up, threw his arms around Sanghyuk’s neck, and attempted to sit in his lap. Sanghyuk’s refusal to pull his hands out of the front pocket made that somewhat difficult, but Jaehwan seemed quite determined to do it anyway.

“Listen,” Jaehwan said patiently, forcing his bodyweight onto Sanghyuk, “You can sulk if you want, but I’m cold and you’re big, so—”

“_I hate it now,_ I hate being this big. It fucking sucks.” Sanghyuk snapped, his voice cracking on the very last note. Jaehwan pushed his hood off his head and put a hand on his cheek.

“I don’t,” he said. “It’s fun.”

“How is being able to _snap you_ fun?!”

“Because you don’t,” Jaehwan said, pressing his nose against Sanghyuk’s cheek.

“I’m not following.”

“Hyukkie,” Jaehwan said, still nuzzling him. “You’re big but you’re also still really cute. You’ve always been cute, you’ll always be cute, and it’s fun to hug you and think about it.”

“I don’t feel cute in any way whatsoever,” Sanghyuk informed him. Jaehwan pouted.

“Hug me then,” he demanded.

“What?” Sanghyuk said, baffled. “Why?”

“Hug me,” Jaehwan repeated with an even bigger pout. Sanghyuk felt a pull in his soul that was impossible to resist; he took his hands out of his hoodie pocket and wrapped his arms around Jaehwan’s slender waist. Immediately, Jaehwan melted against him; now that he didn’t have to worry about falling off Sanghyuk’s lap, he seemed perfectly comfortable just snuggling up to him.

On a desk chair.

“Hyung—”

“Nobody else can do this, you know,” Jaehwan informed him. Sanghyuk felt his lips brushing against his neck as he spoke. Goosebumps rose on his arms.

“Hug you?”

“_Hold_ me,” Jaehwan corrected. “I’m big. You’re bigger. And cuter.”

“Nobody is cuter than you,” Sanghyuk said with conviction. The lips against his neck pecked him fondly.

The circle in the center of the room flared to life; Satan’s ambiguous form arose from the center. There was something agitated in the way he continued to remain visually elusive; despite lacking facial features, Sanghyuk felt like he was being glared at.

“Okay, look,” Satan said in a tone that suggested his patience was wearing thin. “This is getting ridiculous.”

“What?” Jaehwan asked defensively. He seemed not even remotely surprised to see the devil himself in Sanghyuk’s room; in fact, his expression suggested they were quite familiar with each other.

“This is super gay,” Satan said, arms crossed.

“And?” Jaehwan asked. “Gay is fine, you told me yourself.”

“I know I did, just—surely you’re sinning right now!”

“Am I?” Jaehwan asked primly. He threw in another pout, which caused Satan to scrub at his own face with a sound of frustration somewhere between breaking bricks and grinding teeth. 

“No, you’re not, but you _should be_,” Satan hissed. 

“Do you two know each other?” Sanghyuk asked, feeling as though this was a perfectly valid question under the circumstances. Jaehwan blinked, then smiled sheepishly.

“Oh, sorry,” Jaehwan said. “Hyukkie, this is Satan. Satan, Sanghyuk.”

“We actually go way back, Jyani,” Satan informed him. “We’ve got a thing going on, you know how it is.”

“What?” Jaehwan said, turning back in confusion. “What do you mean ‘a thing’?”

“A deal,” Satan said, hands moving vaguely. “An agreement. A covenant. Whatever.”

“I tried to get out of it, but he said no,” Sanghyuk complained.

“Buddy, I told you,” Satan said patiently. “It’s not my fault if you don’t read the TOS before you hit ‘agree’.”

“Why do _you_ know him!?” Sanghyuk asked Jaehwan in alarm. Jaehwan pulled a face and jerked a thumb in Satan’s direction.

“He’s been after my soul for years,” Jaehwan said. “Can’t collect because I’m too cute.” Satan put both hands on his chest-area like he was offended by the very accusation.

“Excuse you,” Satan said. “Your soul _should_ be mine, done, end of story.”

“But it’s not,” Jaehwan said flatly. “Too cute.”

“Cuteness has nothing to do with this!” Satan said, throwing his hands up. “You’re pure! Why are you pure?! It doesn’t make sense!”

“Well, I mean,” Sanghyuk said. “He is pretty fucking cute.”

“_Cute doesn’t make you free from sin,_” Satan complained. “He swears, he buys hella expensive shit just because he can, he’s constantly tempting people just by _existing_—his booty should be mine!”

“But it’s not,” Jaehwan said. “Lol.”

“He _uses chatspeak outloud_,” Satan pointed out in exasperation. “If that’s not a freaking mortal sin, I don’t know what is!”

Jaehwan wiggled smugly in Sanghyuk’s lap.

“You know what? I just can’t with you, okay,” Satan said. “Sanghyuk, new deal. Dirty this guy for me and you are off scot-free. No more dibsing, no more growing—free. Just smudge his soul a little, a _tiny bit_, just so I have _somewhere_ to start.”

Sanghyuk felt a flare in his chest. 

He kept one arm around Jaehwan’s back, and one under his knees; then he stood up so he was holding Jaehwan bridal-style.

“Uh, Hyukkie?” Jaehwan asked. 

“Don’t worry,” Sanghyuk said. “I’m not doing it.”

“Well, I mean, obviously not,” Jaehwan said. “I’m just saying, maybe watch your step here, this guy is slimy.”

“Wow, _rude_,” Satan said. “See, this is exactly what I mean! You say stuff like that but nah, still clean? What the actual heck is going on here!?”

Sanghyuk straightened, drawing himself up to his full height, then reached for his lowest voice.

“New deal,” Sanghyuk said. “Stop coming for him, or I fuck you up.”

“Are... are you for real?” Satan said. “Kid, you can’t... you’re not even close to the level—”

“I’ll quit entertainment and join a monastery so you never collect another soul from me again.” 

“Whoa now, let’s not be hasty here,” the devil replied, putting his hands up in a ‘slow down cowboy’ gesture. “Nobody wants a deal with me to go south, so let’s just calm down and—”

“Leave Jaehwan alone,” he repeated. “Or you’ll be the one regretting this deal.”

There was a pause; he devil flickered, finger on the place where his mouth would be if he had one. It was hard to say what he was thinking when he didn’t really have a face, but if Sanghyuk had to venture a guess, it would be somewhere between annoyance and resignation.

“Can I have one of your other ones then?” Satan asked hopefully. “The handsome one has a dark side I could totally work with under the right circumstances.

“You can’t have Binnie,” Jaehwan said. “Or anybody else.”

“Or I’ll fight you,” Sanghyuk added firmly.

“Good luck with that,” Satan said with a snort.

“And I’ll tell Hakyeon you were mean to me,” Sanghyuk added. The devil actually flinched, making a strange sound like boulders being crunched in a massive landslide.

“Fine, fine!” he spat with a flare of heat. “I get it, I’ll fuck off, okay? Geez, I try to grant _one_ wish and nobody _appreciates_ me.”

In an instant, he was gone, leaving only the slightest hint of crisp, burnt ozone drifting through the air. 

“Well, that worked out,” Jaehwan said brightly, still in Sanghyuk’s arms. “Does this mean you’re going to stop being a beefcake?”

“I don’t think so,” Sanghyuk said. “Is that—okay?”

Jaehwan’s hand slid up his jaw, steering their lips together in a sweet, soft kiss. There was something special about it, something refreshing, something—oddly pure. It felt almost angelic, warm and radiant.

“New idea: bench press me, then we can make out for a while,” Jaehwan suggested with an extreme amount of enthusiasm when they parted. 

Sanghyuk laughed.


End file.
